CAMP SWIFT — Greeted with “hooahs” from National Guard soldiers he's about to deploy to the border, Gov. Rick Perry told the troops Wednesday they would face “narco-terrorists” who are threatening Americans in Texas and other states.

“You now are the tip of the spear in protecting Americans from these cartels and gangs,” Perry said in a visit to Camp Swift near Bastrop, where the Guard is training. “As they are able to get past you, they could be headed to any city, any neighborhood in this country, and they're spreading their tentacles of crime and fear.”

Perry last month ordered 1,000 troops to the Rio Grande, where they will assist Department of Public Safety troopers in a surge of forces ordered by the governor to help deal with an increase in Central American immigrants crossing the border.

The GIs will be armed, but they won't make arrests.

Neither Perry nor Texas National Guard officials would say when the troops will head to the Valley or how long they will remain.

The deployment of Guardsmen and DPS troopers will cost $18 million a month, and state officials this week said funding for the effort will run out in October.

Perry, the nation's only governor to move Guardsmen to the border at state expense, told the troops in a muggy hangar that more than 2,200 of them had volunteered to help. The Texas National Guard has 22,330 troops.

Since October, Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley have apprehended more than 46,000 immigrant children traveling alone and more than 48,000 immigrants in families, a marked increase from past years, with the vast majority coming from Central America.

Perry repeatedly has laid blame for the increase on Washington, which has more than doubled the number of Border Patrol agents since 2000 to more than 21,000.

Perry said that while more officers are on duty, “it's the administrative level, the folks in Washington, D.C., that have deployed them in the wrong places.”

Critics have accused the governor of politicizing the issue to gain national attention for a possible second run for president.

“Even in his visit to the National Guard Training Center today, he did not specify metrics, timetables, training or even provide a clearly defined mission for our soldiers who are being deployed to respond to the thousands of children arriving in our state fleeing drug cartel and gang violence in Central America,” U.S. Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-San Antonio, said Wednesday. “This appears to be a feel-good show of force without clear purpose.”

Perry said the increase in crossings is a public safety concern, because the large number of children and families turning themselves in has forced the Border Patrol to concentrate on a small stretch of the Rio Grande in Hidalgo County.

Meanwhile, smugglers are moving to other parts of the river, he said.

The latest operation looks a lot like some done in the past.

In 2007, Perry's Operation Wrangler called up 604 Texas Guard soldiers working in “security platoons” along the Rio Grande as part of what his office called a “rolling surge.”

Funded by state taxpayers, it lasted just two weeks.

Perry also launched a widely publicized border Web cam program that ended just before Christmas 2006. A $2 million Web cam program that followed two years later was deemed a flop by critics, who noted it led to just three arrests.

SMU political scientist Cal Jillson said Perry has used the border as an issue for years. While illicit immigration is down sharply from six years ago, Jillson said the governor has cited an increase in child immigrants to forge a tougher stance on border security.

“It has taken him from being a punch line at the end of the 2012 presidential run to being, again, a front-runner, in the very early stages of the 2016 race,” said Jillson, a longtime follower of Texas gubernatorial politics.

“This has just as much to do with Perry's potential presidential bid as it has to do with securing the U.S.-Mexico border,” Rice University political scientist Mark Jones agreed. “Rick Perry has always taken a strong position on securing the U.S.-Mexico border, and a noncynical way of looking at this is Perry doing what's simultaneously best for his political career and best for the state of Texas.”

Perry swatted down the idea that his latest border-security mission was a political ploy.

“The idea that what we're doing is politics vs. protecting the people of Texas, the people of this country, is just false on its face,” he said. “These men and women know what they're doing. I trust them, I'm proud of them and I will support them.”